author
Chas. M. (Charles Michael) Higgins
1854–1929
Best known as the inventor of Higgins American India Ink, this Irish-born Brooklyn entrepreneur built a company whose products became familiar to artists, architects, and draftsmen. He also left behind a paper trail that shows him as a forceful and sometimes controversial public advocate.
1 Audiobook
Horrors of vaccination exposed and illustrated Petition to the President to abolish compulsory vaccination in Army and Navy
by Chas. M. (Charles Michael) Higgins
About the author
Born in County Leitrim, Ireland, in 1854, he moved to Brooklyn as a child and spent much of his life there. He became a prominent ink manufacturer and is most closely associated with Higgins American India Ink, the drawing ink that helped make the Charles M. Higgins Company widely known.
Archival collections describe him as the head of the company that manufactured the ink he invented, with operations centered in Brooklyn. Historical records also show that he published pamphlets and took strong public positions on issues of his day, including anti-vaccination activism.
Today, he is remembered both as an inventive businessman and as a vivid local figure in Brooklyn history—someone whose work reached studios and drafting tables far beyond New York.